Coupled Thermo-Elastic Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis of Thin-walled Structures

摘要

The present paper deals with the geometrically and thermally non-linear finite element analysis of thermo-elastic problems in structural mechanics. The focus of the paper is on the consideration of the thermo-elastic coupling effects. Due to coupling of the mechanical and thermal variables in the field equations non-classical effects occur, like e.g. heating due to compression, cooling due to stretching, and damping of vibrations due to heat loss. The treatment of the thermo-elastic coupling is based on a thermodynamically consistent framework of continuum mechanics. The second law inequality is used to derive restrictions for the constitutive equations. This approach leads to thermo-mechanically coupled field equations. For the transition to 2-D plate and shell theory, the first-order shear deformation (Reissner-Mindlin) hypothesis is used along with the hypothesis of a cubic through-thickness distribution of the temperature field. By means of finite element simulations the effect of thermo-mechanical coupling is demonstrated. Two examples dealing with the temperature change due to compression of a rod, and with damping effects on thermally induced plate vibrations, respectively, are presented.